How to Make Mapo Tofu

First, assemble your ingredients. Chinese cooking requires quick hands and doesn’t like to wait for the unprepared.

You need soft tofu, cubed to bite sized pieces after draining. Chop one stem of green onion and stand by with cooking oil, optional meat and veggies, and pre-packaged mapo sauce in the spice level of your choice.

I stop to think about whether this can be considered an authentic recipe if I didn’t make the sauce from scratch. Wait. What is mapo sauce made of? It’s Szechuan. I’m not Szechuan. I know that the brand I’m using (bright red, flat box and green edges) is the one I’ve always used. I buy the medium hot variety and add chili sauce later. Did my mother use this brand? I picture her standing at the kitchen counter opening the interior sauce packet with kitchen shears. She has an apron tied back, slippers on her feet. There’s her close-cropped hair dyed too black and sleeves rolled up her short arms. But my memory changes rapidly between her kitchens in Wilmington Island, in Birmingham, in Knoxville, in Sanford. Her pose doesn’t change. Her back is to me with elbow raised and ready to cut open the packet. The speed at which I file through these kitchen scenes is why I think I might be wrong that she ever used a store-bought sauce. Then again, Mommy loved a shortcut.

Next, you grab the wok and turn the heat up to high before adding your cooking fat.

I need to keep my wok from sliding off the uneven burners in my tiny Manhattan apartment. It should be easier to keep a space this small clean and neat, but it seems like a losing battle. I gave up on being a tidy person when I was fourteen years old, after my parents told me to clean my room. Suddenly, I’m trying to bury my body in the tan Berber carpet of my bedroom while my father throws my desk chair against the wall by my head. I’m staring at the glass in the carpet threads, trying to drown in them. It isn’t working. I find myself outside the front door breathing hard in the winter air with no shoes on and only a thin sweater over my pajama pants. I can still feel the jagged rocks of the ditch bisecting my neighborhood while I pant softly that he is goingtokillmepleasehelpohpleasehelphe’sgoingtokillmeplease.

Add about a tablespoon of oil, vegetable or olive work best. When the oil is hot, add about two tablespoons of the chopped green onion and let it become fragrant.

Mommy would make eggs for dinner at least twice a week: eggs with tomatoes, eggs with chives, eggs with shrimp, eggs dropped into soup, eggs salted and cured for watery zhou fan. She loved eggs, but Daddy didn’t. He was born on a communist work-farm on the border of Mongolia, because his father was a high-ranking general in the wrong army at the wrong time. He didn’t have an egg until he moved back to his family’s town of Gaoyou at seventeen and now thinks they’re disgusting. He jokes with Mommy that she does this just to piss him off. His voice laughs through the shushing sounds of the Yangzhou Hua dialect we all share. Except one day, he wasn’t in a joking mood so the eggs ended up in the trash. As did the pretty curved serving plate with tulips on the sides, which snapped in two against the bottom of the garbage can.

When you can smell the green onions release their oils, gently slide in the tofu. If you’re using ground meat, add that before the tofu and cook halfway to browning. Then carefully stir the tofu so the pieces aren’t broken up too much.

In my great-aunt’s house outside Savannah, I remember yelling. My parents were screaming at each other while I pretended to nap on the mustard-colored couch in the den. I pressed my cheek into the chintz fabric and breathed evenly out, but they couldn’t hear me anyway. Guo Ma must not have been home. My father’s aunt would not have accepted this type of behavior and especially not in front of a three year-old. She loved me, even though she had only met me a month before. The next day, my mother sat alone with me in the breakfast nook. The sun reflected brightly off the plastic of the sunflower tablecloth, and I stared at her clasped hands on the tabletop. I only understood Mandarin then. “If we were divorced, would you rather live with Baba or me?” I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know how. If I had understood what divorce was, I would have known not to worry. Where was she going to go?

Stirring gently, cook the tofu for about five minutes then pour in the sauce. Turn the heat down to medium-high and carefully mix so that the tofu is coated. It will appear too thick but the liquid the tofu releases will thin it out.

I’m too full. I know that I’m too full. Mommy has made pork bone soup and a plate of long garlic chives with beansprouts. I love this meal and I took too much, so now the rest of my helping is sitting in my bowl and I can’t put it back. They break the silence that rests at every dinner by asking why I stopped eating. I don’t look up when I say that I’m too full. Daddy tells me I’m greedy and I’m fat. Mommy says I can’t waste food. My feet curl around the support in between the legs of my chair. They won’t let me get up from the table, and I’m scared. The fear hurts in my stomach and makes it harder to pick up the spoon, but I have to. I feel stinging in my nose but I’m old enough by the time my toes can touch the floor to know that crying will make it worse. They only let me stop when I’m throwing up the rice and soup back into my bowl. It occurs to me later that I’ve learned something new about my limits and theirs.

Once your mapo tofu is at a soft boil, add additional vegetables or mushrooms as desired. Peas or carrots can add texture, whereas small mushrooms are a good source of additional protein. Be sure to chop any added ingredients finely.

My mother keeps a large butcher’s knife in its own special drawer. It has a bamboo handle and a wide square blade with a stamp imprinted in the steel. She uses it to chop through tough things, and the heavy thwack against the wooden cutting board sounds as sharp as its edge. I had a rebellious pre-teen phase like anyone else. I snapped at my father one evening that I was an American now and that I didn’t have to do everything he told me to. He got up from the dining table, grabbed that vicious knife out of its drawer, and held it against my wrist. It happened so quickly that I didn’t move, and he pressed the slick edge into the soft flesh of my inner arm. “In this house, my house, it is China. I can do whatever I want to you. You’re mine and no one could stop me from killing you if I wanted to. Call the police. Call whoever you want. You’re nothing. They won’t stop me. You think they’ll believe a little girl?”

When the mapo tofu has been simmering for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, you can turn off the heat. Add a few more chopped green onions as a garnish. Serve with a side of steamed white rice.

I heard that every memory is a story you tell yourself, that you only remember the last time you remembered like a hall of mirrors folding in on itself. My first memory is walking across the main room of our ground floor apartment in Yangzhou. It had electricity but no running water and no flooring. We used a rusty metal tap in the communal courtyard, kept chamber pots under our beds, and a single bulb hanging from the ceiling in the kitchen that also served as our living quarters. I was just a toddler who tripped while carrying my small bowl of white rice for dinner. The thin, weak porcelain shattered and the rice mixed in with the dirt under my short fingers. When I looked up at my mother, her face was red and streaked from crying.

You can store your mapo tofu, tightly sealed and refrigerated, for three to five days.